


The Smell of Snow

by robberreynard



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Clan Lavellan - Freeform, Comfort, Hurt, M/M, Minor Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 02:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2796689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robberreynard/pseuds/robberreynard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malin Lavellan has only one regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Smell of Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Another quick drabble that happened the moment I realized you could basically destroy clan Lavellan. It's surprisingly sort of gleamed over in the game. KINDA BIG THING TO IGNORE GUYS. It's short and rather open ended but I hope you enjoy feeling sad as much as I do.

Two nights Malin had been absent from his bechambers, yet no one would say why or where he had gone. The weight of something heavy and unseen rested on Skyhold in his absence. It was made painfully apparent to Dorian when he tried speaking to Josephine to ask where their Inquisitor might have gone, and her eyes welled with tears. When he went to Cullen, and the Commander turned his gaze downward, away from the mage, saying simply; “Let him be for now.” Leliana no doubt knew where he was, but Dorian decided it might be better to follow the Commander’s advice. He didn’t know what had transpired between the advisers and their Herald. Did he really want to? Part of him did, yet the larger part feared the answer. Malin was hardly the man to run off into solitude over just anything. Whatever had happened…to crack the bright and jovial exterior of their Inquisitor, it must have been terrible.

On the third day, just as Dorian was considering going after him, there stood a lithe figure on the roof of the tavern. He blinked, at first not knowing if he was just seeing a mad trick of the light or he was conjuring up images of the elf. The figure remained when he opened his eyes again. Then it was definitely him, he thought eagerly, only to feel a tug at his stomach when the nagging question of where he had gone and why resurfaced.

It was tricky to climb from the ramparts to the roof of the tavern for someone whose feet rarely left the good, solid earth. His foot almost slipped on the tiles and it was struggle to get the other leg to join the first. Finally he managed to climb up to where Malin stood, balanced on the tavern’s seam.

“Phew!” Dorian made an exaggerated sound to catch the elf’s attention, “Wonderful place to slip and fall to your death, isn’t it?”

“The view is nice,” Malin replied with a startling lack of humor in his voice.

“If you like the color white, yes, it’s very nice,” Dorian, unsure of how to handle the other man when he wasn’t cracking jokes, said and clambered up the steep incline to stand uneasily beside him. Cloudy gray eyes darted to look at him for a moment before they turned back to look at all the things outside the bounds of Skyhold.

“It’s strange not to see trees when I look out over the landscape. Snow is beautiful and all, but it’s like swallowing needles if you try and breathe it in, and it all melds together into shapeless piles of nothing. It has no smell, no color.” He turned to look at Dorian with a smile. It should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. “When I was a child, I would spend hours in the forests. Days. Whenever the clan came to the mountains or some secluded patch of land, untouched by humans, I would find the nearest tree I was tall enough to climb and make my way up it until I vanished into the canopy. Sometimes I could go an entire day without ever touching the ground. I would always come back with leaves and sticks in my hair. Heh, whenever I asked the Keeper about my parents, she would laugh and say at least one of them was a squirrel.”

“That would explain so much.”

Another somewhat painful tug at the corners of his mouth. Malin leaned against the stone tower looming over the tavern, arms crossed. There was an almost tangible sorrow in that stance, and Dorian was reminded that of all the things he could protect the elf from, melancholy was not so easily driven off.

“I miss it, you know. Climbing. I try to climb around Skyhold, but it’s all slick stone. Even if I do manage to make it somewhere high, I end up with no way to go forward.” Bitter wind rushed across them, tearing at Malin’s cloak.

“Amatus,” he began softly, “Did something…happen?”

“I regret it,” Malin said and caught Dorian off guard, “I regret every minute of it. I spent so much time on my own, running around the forests, away from them. I missed out on so much. Those days…those days I spent alone, I look back on them so fondly, but those shouldn’t be the things I remember and smile. It’s wrong. I should have…been there…To teach the flat ears from the city how to shoot a bow, to hear Master Fenan’s stories. I should have danced with them when there was a celebration instead of watching the bonfire burning from somewhere miles away. Watched the halla in their pens, told the children of all the things I’d seen, helped the hunters bring in a kill. But no. I secluded myself. I left at every opportunity I got. I spent my time with moss and trees, I spent more time watching shemlen villages instead of being with my own people. That’s why they sent me to the Conclave, you know. Because I was nothing like them. I’d spent so much time around humans, around anyone but them, that I was practically removed from Dalish culture all together.”

“Mali-”

“They died because of me, Dorian!” He roared in a voice completely foreign to the smart mouthed elf. “I wanted to save everyone and I didn’t save a soul, I was going to be smart, and diplomatic, and good, and kind and I got them killed! And I don’t even have the fucking decency to remember them as anything but ‘my clan’! They weren’t my clan, they were my family, and I can’t even think of them like that! I have no right!”

His words struck the Tevinter like a bolt. Whatever welling anger and heartache that drove the outburst from his chest seemed to be the only thing holding him up. Having spent it all on those words, he crumpled against the other man’s chest, nearly sending them both off the edge of the tavern. Dorian caught him and held him tighter than he had ever before. The lithe figure against his chest shook uncontrollably as he drew in a stuttering breath hinging on a sob.

There were many things he could have said, and wanted to. But he too, had no right. He had never experienced this brand of heartache and so anything he might have said would have rung hollow. So he simply stood there, allowing the Inquisitor, the man that had traveled through time, beaten demons, united nations, and now stood as the last of clan Lavellan, to wail in his arms.

There would be time for talk later.


End file.
